Patent Application
20170211812
This is an original U.S. patent application.
The invention is in the technical field of stoves. More specifically, this invention relates to a safe venting control for stoves that re-directs fumes for release into an outdoor environment when a cooking container is removed from stovetop, to prevent the release of harmful emissions into an indoor environment.
A significant danger of indoor cooking is air pollution by toxic emissions from fuel combustion. If not vented properly, harmful emissions can cause death in a closed environment. According to World Health Organization's report in 2014, harmful emissions from indoor cooking are responsible for 4 million death each year.
Some existing stoves may have a safe venting mechanism only while a pot is placed on stovetop. For example, sunken pot stoves, where harmful gas exhaust passing through gaps between a pot bottom and a stovetop is drafted into a gas outlet before it is safely released. However, sunken pot stoves do not have the ability to effectively prevent harmful exhaust gas from being released once a pot is removed, unless an open stovetop is manually closed or the cooking fire is put out.
Existing stoves purely rely on human actions to close a stovetop or to put out cooking fire in order to ensure safe emission of fumes when a cooking container is removed from a stovetop. However, it is impractical and inefficient to put out a fire and to start a new fire between each cooking. Additionally, people often forget to close a stovetop in between cooking sessions. In developing countries where people usually reside in a relatively small, crowded and closed environment without proper venting outlets, death can easily occur when a cook forgets to close an open stovetop between cooking sessions after a cooking container has been removed.
It is desirable to have a stove that has a mechanism to correlate the placement and removal of a cooking container on a stovetop with the proper venting outlets, such that toxic gas from fuel burning can be prevented from being released into an indoor area inadvertently. Such a mechanism will save lives.
Embodiments of the invention correlate two configurations of a trigger control with the pressure or weight placed on top of a stovetop, and each configuration of the trigger control directs toxic burning emissions into a safe venting outlet, either during cooking or in-between cooking sessions. When the pressure or weight placed on the stovetop is zero or miniscule, i.e., no cooking container is placed on the stovetop, the trigger control adopts a configuration to immediately direct burning emissions into a chimney for outdoor release. When there is enough pressure or weight placed on the stovetop, e.g., the weight of a normal cooking container, small or big, the trigger control adopts a different configuration to direct heat and burning emissions to the stovetop for heating food in the cooking container, whereas the toxic burning emissions can be further drafted into a chimney for outdoor release using the sunken-pot stove concept.
In the embodiment shown in
When enough pressure or weight is placed on the stovetop 101 (for example, the weight of a cooking container), the pressure or weight causes the vertical bar 205 to move downward with limited horizontal movement as restricted by the guide 207, resulting in the coordinate movement of the trigger control 204 by overcoming the force 208 (either the weight of a weight or the tension of a spring as shown in
When there is no pressure or weight (or when there is a miniscule amount of pressure) placed on the stovetop 101, for example, when a cooking container is removed, as shown in
The trigger control 204 is preferably made of a heat resistant material. It is desirable to mount the trigger control 204 inside the wall 105 for aesthetic reason. However, the trigger control 204 may be located outside of the wall 105 for ease of maintenance and repair, in which embodiment, a case (not shown in the figures) can be built to cover the portion of the trigger control 204 exposed outside of the wall 105.
When the vertical bar 205 moves up and down, the guide 207 provides an appropriate amount of horizontal space such that the vertical bar 205 can move to its upmost position to ensure the side-release position of the flap or gate 203, and to its down-most position to ensure the stovetop-release position of the flap or gate 203. The horizontal space provided by the guide 207 depends on the cross section measurement of the vertical bar 205. In one embodiment, the vertical bar 205's cross section is a circle having a diameter of 4 mm and the horizontal space's cross section is a rectangle having a dimension of 6 mm×5 mm.
If the force 208 is a weight, the heaviness of the weight depends on the material and size of the trigger control 204. In one embodiment, the trigger control 204 is made of steel stock, both the vertical bar 205 and the lever 206 are cylindrical bars having a cross section diameter of 4 mm and are 18 cm in length, and the force 208 weighs 300 g.
In one embodiment, the force 208 is detachable from the trigger control 204, making it easy to adjust or replace the force 208, especially when the trigger control 204 is located outside of the wall 105. In yet another embodiment, the force 208 is molded to the trigger control 204.
The combustion chamber 103 and the exhaust chamber 200 are preferably made of materials that resist and insulate heat. The wall 105 is preferably made of an insulate material.
It is noted that, as used in this specification and the appended claims, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the,” include plural referents unless expressly and unequivocally limited to one referent. As used herein, the term “include” and its grammatical variants are intended to be non-limiting, such that recitation of items in a list is not to the exclusion of other like items that can be substituted or other items that can be added to the listed items.
Upon studying the disclosure, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made in the invention and methods of various embodiments of the invention. Other embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the embodiments disclosed herein. It is intended that the specification be considered as examples only. The various embodiments are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as some embodiments can be combined with one or more other embodiments to form new embodiments.
